Blowback (20 page)

At 0630 hours
the door to Chris's office stood open, and Vanessa barely slowed to deliver a cursory knock as she walked in, pulling it shut.

From behind his laptop, Chris looked up over his glasses—frowning, sleep-deprived, badly in need of a shave—a man who appeared older than his thirty-eight years. Once, a few years ago when they were working past midnight, he'd confided in Vanessa how much he hungered to be back in the field, how much he missed it. Anything but surprising, given the present atmosphere—frequent shifts in management, congressional probes, even the best of the best hunkering down defensively. But he was stuck at Headquarters for a few more years in order to take care of his aging parents.

“I heard you just got back,” he said, his gaze narrowing intently as she stood facing him.

“I hand-delivered my asset's phone and BlackBerry to Tech, and the files to Lee in financial analysis, and I think some of the data will turn out to be pivotal for Operation Ghost Hunt.”

Chris nodded but he looked distracted, almost as if he hadn't heard her, and Vanessa pulled up internally.

He said, “Cyprus turned into a hell of a mess.”

“Bad, yeah.” She was walking a very thin line—Cyprus
was
a mess, and Chris didn't know the half of it. She couldn't shrug off the gravity of her emotions, but she didn't want to give Chris time to dig into her, so she kept going. “But right now I've got something else.” She set the palm of one hand deliberately on his desktop. With her other hand she pushed a thin manila folder across to him. Now she let the glimmer of exhilaration she experienced override her exhaustion.

He marked the moment with a kind of wired stillness before he nudged himself away from his computer and opened the folder. It contained fifteen pages: a copy of Arash Farah's original text of 105 characters of archaic Persian. Most important, the last four pages displayed columns of the Persian characters and corresponding columns of numbers.

While he riffled slowly through them, Vanessa waited—now using the rev of internal excitement to drown out a deeper sense of apprehension. She stood almost still while he tracked through the documents for most of a minute.

Finally, Chris set down the pages, inhaling audibly. “Where did you get these?”

“I know,” Vanessa said quickly, ahead of him. “It's what we're looking for. My asset's original page from the cigarette pack had fragments of verses copied from—I'm sorry I'm going to butcher these names—the Khaleghi-Motlagh edition of the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings, which was written sometime in the tenth century. Anyway, the thing is, Arash didn't use a code, he used a
cipher
. So the characters correspond to numbers and the first few lines present the key. With these pages to go on, the code guys should be able to figure it out very quickly.”

Chris's dark eyebrows pulled together and he punctuated his words: “How did you get it, Vanessa? Don't try to case-officer me.”

An old saying that meant
cut the bullshit already—
her pulse spiked and sudden heat pricked her skin, but she didn't skip a beat. “We need the guys at Fort Meade to verify coordinates, and they should have done it yesterday, Chris. We're five days away from D-day on Operation Ghost Hunt.” She jutted her chin toward the pages on his desk. “Is this what we need to pinpoint the location of the facility and get Bhoot? That's what matters now.”

“But if you want me to cover your ass, I need to know how far out you're hanging on this one.”

She swallowed slowly. “David Khoury.”

“Jesus, Vanessa. Damn.” He shook his head, stepping abruptly back.

“But look at what we got.”

“You're acting like a goddamn cowboy—I can't begin to list your sins, but, Christ, you've shared classified intel with someone outside this op, and you did it without authority. What the hell does David know about Operation Ghost Hunt?”

“
Nothing.
I told him he had to fly blind when I asked for his help.” She shook her head. “He was the logical choice, a linguist, and with his contacts, it made sense. And look, the results are
good
.”

Chris eyed her sharply, his expression direct, his words matter-of-fact. “If there is something more to this, then you need to tell me
now
.”

She tried to swallow, but her throat had gone suddenly, painfully dry. “There is nothing more to this, Chris, believe me.” But the lie made her feel sick to her stomach.

“That better be the whole story,” he said slowly. “Because if there's more, a relationship . . . trust me, Vanessa, then you're out where I can't help you.”

For a moment she thought she would confess the truth—how clean it would feel not to carry the lie any longer. But the next moment brought realization—if she did confess, this would become about her failures instead of being about Operation Ghost Hunt and bringing down Bhoot. She would let go of Khoury, she told herself quickly, silently. She was strong enough. She would do what was ultimately best for both of them and end the relationship, and Chris never had to know anything about it. She took a quick breath and, hating to do it, forced out one more lie. “I swear, Chris, I've told you all there is to know.”

His eyes stayed on her, his silent question almost tangible. Finally, he said, “All I need to know and all there is. I hope they are the same.”

“You know me, Chris, we have history, go with me on this,” she said softly. “This cost my asset his life.”

He made her wait longer than she wanted before he slid the pages back into the manila folder. “I'll get it to the right analysts.”

She nodded once, careful to mask both her relief and her disquiet. As she turned to leave, she puffed out a quick breath. Her fingers closed around the doorknob, almost clear—

“Vanessa.”

Khoury—
she couldn't afford to go there again, not now. She pushed the door open before she turned again to face Chris.

He held up the folder. “You think this is your card back in? You went outside channels, screwed up royally, and, ultimately, they'll count that as another strike against you.”

“How do
you
count it, Chris?”

For a moment, her hope spiked.

But as the seconds ticked by, his silence was answer enough.

She took him in for a moment, seeing a man who was both familiar and a stranger. She'd counted Chris and Khoury as the two men who mattered most in her life next to her father and her brother. Men she trusted absolutely.
They had her back.
But now she found herself wondering if she'd let them both down badly. She found it difficult to meet Chris's eyes.

“One more thing before you go, Vanessa.” Chris set the folder on the desk, pulled off his glasses, and massaged the painful pink imprints left by the nose pads. “You need to stop at OMD. Dr. Wright.”

One of the Agency's shrinks—shit.

“Can't it wait until we hear back—”

Chris shut her down. “Take care of it now. You're not doing anything else until OMD's done with you.”

In the muted glow
of the tastefully appointed office in the medical division, Dr. Peyton Wright's glass-green eyes drilled into Vanessa. “You must know there is concern about your immediate ability to function effectively and safely as a case officer.”

It took all Vanessa's willpower to stay seated in the soft, padded leather chair, but she knew enough not to interrupt the Agency psychologist's opening statement. There would be nothing diplomatic or therapeutic about this evaluation. Dr. Wright had an agenda, and Vanessa had one question to answer as quickly as possible: Did the shrink have it in for her, regardless of what happened during this hour or two, or did Vanessa have room to maneuver?

“For the moment, let's skip over the fact your asset in Prague disappeared seven months ago with a noticeable sum of the taxpayers' money. Some of your
more recent
decisions in the field have been, at the very least, questionable.” Dr. Wright held up her slender, manicured index finger. “Failure to obey a direct order to abort a mission, a failure that resulted in the death of your high-level asset in Vienna.”

The statement hit Vanessa with a jolt—Chris must have spoken directly to Dr. Wright. Not exactly a shock, but still . . . a shock. Now she did pull halfway out of the damn chair. “As you must know, I was debriefed by the DDO and Chris Arvanitis directly, and it's in my official report—when the order to abort came, my asset was within a few meters of me and I made a judgment call to continue the operation at least long enough to hear if he had actionable intel. He risked his life to meet with me—”

“And died because of it,” Dr. Wright finished tersely.

“You don't know that,” Vanessa shot back. “My asset was targeted, and it's probable he would have been killed even if I had aborted that meeting, and we would certainly not have his intel now—intel that's driving a vital CPD op.”

Dr. Wright raised her pen above the clipboard in her trim lap, but she kept her eyes on Vanessa. “You're right,” she said. “There is no way to know absolutely if your asset would still be alive if you had obeyed orders—but it is possible he would have escaped assassination.”

Vanessa suppressed a shudder, only too aware she was under minute scrutiny—body language, vocal inflection, facial expression.

Where the hell did Peyton Wright get off judging the actions of case officers when she'd no doubt spent most of her fifteen-year career in twelve-by-twelve windowless offices, typing up reports based on
soft
science? What the hell did she know about the reality of the ops world?

But Vanessa checked herself sharply. Peyton Wright was
working
her—part of her job as Agency shrink. It wasn't her job to dole out therapy. If you have issues, resolve them outside these walls or don't. The only relevant question in here: Can you do your job or not?

And Vanessa could damn well do her job, so she took a breath and eased her hands to her lap. “No one regrets the outcome of the operation in Vienna more than I do.” She kept her voice steady and firm. “First and foremost, I am responsible for the security of the operation and the safety of my assets. Whether I like them or not, I am responsible for their well-being. I am responsible for their lives.” Her voice cracked just a little on the last word. She took another breath and finished what she needed to say. “Their safety is paramount. I never let myself forget that. I not only
cared
about the asset who died in Vienna, but I also had great respect for him. With that said, I stand by my judgment call.”

While the psychologist put pen to paper, obviously recording her statement, Vanessa stared at her own hands resting in her lap. Her usually blunt, buffed fingernails looked ragged, several of her knuckles scraped, and even though she'd showered that morning, her skin felt as if it were covered with a layer of grime. She held herself straight and steady in the chair—and for a moment even that much energy seemed too much effort against the deep exhaustion that had overtaken her.

She blinked when Dr. Wright clicked the pen and set it against the clipboard. “I've noted your responses. I really do care about getting your side of this, Vanessa. Do you have anything else to add before we continue?”

Vanessa heard an ominous finality in the psychologist's words. She knew she should respond, but all she could do was give a small, reflexive lift of her fingers:
Go ahead.

“Barely one week after your asset was killed in Vienna, you drove to an open location on Cyprus, and you met with a newly assigned asset. You did this even though, less than twenty-four hours earlier, you expressed concerns for this asset's safety and you requested a surveillance team—a request you made personally to your director of operations.”

Vanessa took a breath against the tightness building behind her ribs. She met the psychologist's eyes, honestly trying to set aside her resentment. “There is no rule book, no manual that defines what to do in every field situation. It's my job to make judgment calls—that's why I'm in operations—and making those judgment calls is a vital part of my ‘fitness for duty' as a case officer.”

“So you made a judgment call to meet, and what did you find?”

Vanessa glanced down, buying a few seconds. Dr. Wright certainly had access to the reports, but no doubt she wanted to interpret and cross-check Vanessa's words in the retelling. SOP for psych evaluations, but still offensive—and evidently effective, because Vanessa had to force the words out. “I heard shots as I was proceeding to the site for the meeting. This was outdoor terrain, very rugged. By the time I reached my asset, he was already dead, but his bodyguard was alive and exchanging fire with the sniper.”

“So you took your asset's briefcase that you hoped contained intel he was going to pass to you.”

“It did contain intel,” Vanessa said flatly. “He'd given me a good indication of what he would deliver.”

“And how did this bodyguard react when you showed up?”

Startled when I pulled out my Five-Seven pistol—
Vanessa blinked away the thought and said, “After a few moments he recognized me. He was
busy
—returning fire to a point about seven or eight hundred meters from where we were.”

“Do you think this is an appropriate time for sarcasm?”

“No, I'm not trying—of course I don't. I was there. I know what it's like to be in the line of fire. Do you?”

Dr. Wright ignored the challenge, instead asking, “So you took the intelligence, and then you left the bodyguard at the scene?” Her voice hardened to a tone Vanessa read as accusatory. “Was he still returning fire when you left?”

Vanessa closed her eyes—felt the warm breeze, smelled her own sweat and Sergei's blood, flinched as she relived the dash from the Queen's Window to the ancient stairway that ascended the ramparts of the castle wall.

“Vanessa?” The psychologist's voice seemed to come from far away. “Was the bodyguard alive when you left?”

She felt the sting of her spent muscles as she crouched on the wall, taking aim on the Chechen, tasting how much she wanted to hurt him—to stop him—

“Vanessa.”

Wrenching herself back to the present, she stared at Dr. Wright. After a few more seconds she shook her head. “The bodyguard took a fatal shot just as I retrieved the briefcase.” She swallowed past the accumulating lies. Her mouth felt dry. “So I immediately began my descent to the parking lot and my car.”

Dr. Wright tipped her head, frowning—you could almost see the circuits running at hyper-speed because she'd sensed missing pieces. Vanessa heard the too-slow heartbeat of a clock hidden somewhere out of easy sight while her own heart seemed to stop and then race to catch up with itself.
Shit—not here, not a panic attack. She'd never be allowed in the field again.
She shifted stiffly in the chair. God, she needed a cigarette. The room seemed smaller now, like a cell.

“Are you feeling all right, Vanessa?”

“Yes.” But she felt her head jerk into a nod.

“You've lost color, and you're sweating. I'm concerned, and I think we should break here—”

“
No.
I'm okay.” She thought she could detect the shakiness in her own voice. “Let's finish this.”

Dr. Wright uncrossed her legs, and Vanessa heard the swish of expensive fabric; at the same time she felt the psychologist's penetrating gaze. How much was she seeing? Vanessa ignored the urge to turn away.

Finally, the doctor spoke. “The loss of an asset doesn't happen every day. In fact, it's extremely rare—especially when he's gunned down in front of you.” She nudged the pen on her clipboard. “And when that loss is followed by the assassination of a second asset within weeks, you would be less than human if you didn't experience some emotional whiplash. Even ops officers trained for high-stress extremes may exhibit feelings of guilt and responsibility, even textbook symptoms of PTSD: insomnia, nightmares, day sweats, flashbacks.”

For a moment, Vanessa couldn't repress the lightning play of images—Arash crumpling to the ground, Yassi's demand for retribution, Sergei's lifeless body hunched against rough-hewn stones as his frightened bodyguard tried to take aim on his boss's assassin, the Chechen hit man firing at them from his hide.

“And I believe, in spite of your bravado, that every morning you must wake up questioning your role in the deaths of these two assets . . .”

The energy drained out of Vanessa abruptly. Her breath caught. She closed her eyes, scrambling mentally to find a center point. How the hell could she tell this psychologist what it was like to make decisions every day that could affect the lives of one person or hundreds? The same questions that plagued her since Sergei's shooting circled back now
.
Was she in some vital way responsible for the deaths of both her assets? If so, how? How big was this? Could it be coincidence? But that was unbelievable.

“Of course I feel things,” Vanessa said softly, finally, opening her eyes to the light. “Don't you think I've been over it and over it, wondering if there was something I should have done differently? But I can't do my job if I allow myself to become paralyzed with doubt, to second-guess myself—that's like a death in itself.”

“Allowing yourself to question your own decisions is not the same as becoming paralyzed with doubt.”

Vanessa met Dr. Wright's piercing gaze. “If I don't dwell on things I can't change, I can get on with my job. That's where I put my focus. That's where I can make a difference.”

Dr. Wright frowned. “You can't afford
not
to feel.”

“
I feel.
And then I move on.” Vanessa saw the shrink's green eyes widen. Dr. Wright was watching her closely.

“Well, my job is to make sure you're coping and dealing with the inevitable stress and emotional fallout, so you
can
get on with your job.”

Vanessa said, “Fair enough.”

“It may not seem like it,” Dr. Wright said in a slower, softer voice than she'd used before. “But we're on the same side, Vanessa. I've reviewed your case file and I know what kind of brilliance and courage you are capable of in the field. But I'm curious . . . you've spoken convincingly about your concern for your assets and the risks they take. But you haven't once mentioned the danger you put yourself in.”

Dr. Wright pressed forward. “When you disobeyed the direct order to abort, you might have ended up as dead as your asset.
And
there is a very real possibility your security is breached. When I say that, I doubt I'm saying anything you haven't considered for yourself.” The psychologist seemed to be waiting for a denial.

But Vanessa met her gaze squarely. “Believe me, I know how serious this is. Not only because of my professional viability, because of the safety of my assets and my colleagues. If my security
has
been breached . . . if I've been pushed out of the hunt for Bhoot . . .”

“Then let's talk about how you're going to cope with the reality of this situation, Vanessa.”

“I'll deal.” She set her jaw.
I know what needs to be done.

“Your father was Air Force, a colonel when he retired . . . a pilot during Vietnam, decorated veteran . . . and also, later, he worked in military intelligence. Although much of the record is classified, he did work in a special-operations force designed to investigate acts of biological and chemical terrorism.”

Vanessa shook her head, startled by the psychologist's trajectory shift. “What does my father's record of service have to do with any of this?” She could almost taste the world on the other side of the office door. Heat rushed through her with a dangerous intensity.

“I have no doubt that your father instilled in you and your brother a deep sense of duty, and you've both chosen to serve your country,” Dr. Wright said softly. “And you are obviously passionately committed to stopping those who use their power destructively. There is an almost tangible urgency around you to protect the innocent. But it's not your job to save the world alone, Vanessa. Nobody can do that.”